


This is Me

by Dearieforever



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 03:03:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16735866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dearieforever/pseuds/Dearieforever
Summary: Rumple learns to accept who he truly is.  Set to the song from The Greatest Showman.  Some lyrics that repeat have been left out.





	This is Me

There would be no more secrets. Rumple was done with Hades or anyone else holding threats over his head. He wasn't going to give the god of death the chance to tell Belle what was happening. Rumple would tell her himself. Everything. That he was the Dark One again, that she was pregnant, and that Hades held a contract that gave him that baby, a contract Rumple had agreed to in desperation to save Bae. He'd hoped for a better reaction from Belle, but the reaction she gave wasn't unexpected.

“You're the Dark One again?” she asked. She was horrified, but if they were ever going to be together, really together, she would have to love the man he was. Otherwise she couldn't love him at all. He nodded and slowly pulled out the dagger, which was inscribed with his name yet again.

I'm not a stranger to the dark.

“You see the thing is,” he told her honestly. “I love this dagger.” Well, not the dagger itself. Not the ability it gave someone else to control him. Not the curse that would eventually blacken his heart. But he loved the strength, the power he felt from magic. If Belle could only feel the difference he felt between having magic and being no one but a cripple, maybe she could understand. With her, he felt like he could keep the darkness in balance, and still have the magic. Light and darkness could co- exist. “And I also love you. Both are possible.”

Belle didn't look like she understood. She was looking at him like a monster she wished would crawl back into some cave. It was the kind of look he was all too used too. It was the look of someone who despised him. He'd seen that look ever since he'd crippled himself.

Hide away, they say, 'cause we don't want your broken parts.

“Look you wanted me to be a better man,” he continued to explain. “And you've done that.” She had reminded him he was more than a monster. He desperately hoped she still believed that. The look in her eyes held little hope that she did. As with the day he'd sent her away from the Dark Castle, he struggled to believe anyone could ever love him. No one except Bae had loved him as a crippled coward, and no one loved him as the Dark One.

I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars.  
Run away, they say. No one will love you as you are.

But to be someone he was wasn't? He couldn't be loved that way either.

“But if you want me to be a different man?” he shook his head. “I'm sorry. This is who I am.”

Belle could not accept that. 

“You weren't always.”

“Yes, I was,” he corrected her. “Even when I was a coward I craved power.” It was as if he was born to magic. As a crippled spinner, he'd never dreamed for a second he could actually use it. When he'd first felt magic flowing through him, it had felt so impossibly, wonderfully right, like he was finally whole. It was as if he'd been crippled in more ways than just his leg, and using magic completed him more than just physically. “The only difference is now I have it, and I won't let it go. Not again.”

That feeling of helplessness at Merida's taunts as he knew Belle was in danger. Knowing he could do nothing as Hook brought every Dark One ever to Storybrook and was going to send everyone to Hades. He would never feel that way again.

But I won't let them break me down to dust.

If only Belle could see that! They could be so good together, as a real team!

I know that there's a place for us. For we are glorious!

“Right,” Belle told him furiously. “Not even for me.”

Those words stung, but he couldn't back down. He had to try to be understood.

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down, I'm gonna send a flood. Gonna drown them out.

“Belle there's something you must realize,” Rumple said. “Falling in love with the man behind the beast isn't really what happened to you. You fell in love with me because I was a man, and a beast. Neither exists without the other.”

I am brave! I am bruised! I am who I'm meant to be! This is me!

“No!” Belle shook her head. “I can't condone you being like this. Not again.” She turned from him.

“Yes, you can,” Rumple told her before she could go far. “You just have to choose to. And if you do, we can have what's important. Family. Happiness. It's your choice.”

“No,” Belle answered. “No I'm not making any choices. Not now. Not until you get me back to our friends and you fix all of this.”

“Then that's what I shall do,” he said confidently. “But you'll see I'm right. You'll see.”

He would have done everything within his power anyway. Did Belle honestly think he wouldn't give everything, his own life included, to protect their child? Hadn't he already given his life once? Hades had no idea what Rumple was capable of, especially when every beat of his heart was guided by love. The god of death would meet his match!

Look out cause here I come! And I'm marching on to the beat I drum.

Belle might not like his methods, but in time she would see it was all for their child.. He wasn't going to regret anything he did to keep that baby safe. If that meant using darkness for the light purpose of   
protecting his family, so be it! He wasn't going to pretend to be someone he wasn't when the real him was what his child needed.

I'm not scared to be seen. I make no apologies. This is me!

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Since she'd woken from the sleeping curse, Belle had continued to reject every attempt Rumple made at reconciling with her. It had taken their child being kidnapped and going through a twenty eight year nightmare to bring them back together. And now, on top of everything, Rumple had just learned he was the Savior. He was destined to give his life to save others, and would have to kill his own mother to do it. 

Another round of bullets hits my skin.

How much would he have to go through? How much more could he stand? Crippling himself and being despised as a coward, being humiliated by that pirate when he'd taken Milah, dying and going to the underworld, being tortured by Zelena, losing Bae, being cast out by Belle, and all that had happened afterward. Wasn't that enough pain? 

Apparently some demonic controlling power had decided not. As he thought about being born the Savior, he couldn't help thinking of all the things he had done that he wished he could change. A Savior? Him? Ridiculous! Hearing that only made his past regrets burn all the hotter in him. No, he would not think of that now. What he had done had been done for his family's sake. Savior of everyone else or not, his own family came first. He would never regret anything that was done for them.

Well fire way! Cause today I won't let the shame sink in!

It was only days later when his determination to protect his family would be tested. This time the villain he faced was himself. Or at least, this villain looked like him. The darkness could take the form of any Dark One. It had been a long, long time since he'd seen or heard a previous Dark One. Because he'd accepted the curse so easily? Because he'd once been destined to be more and could resist the darkness? He wasn't sure. In any case, he now stood facing what he considered the hardest enemy to beat, one that wanted to tempt him with everything, love and power. The price was letting Gideon kill Emma, darkening himself.

“No,” Rumple told the Darkness. “I won't betray my family. I will do the right thing.” The truth he had so recently learned kept going through his mind. “I was destined to become the Savior.” 

That destiny was changed, but what if he he could still claim it? What if he could own his own destiny, and in doing so own the Darkness rather than be ruled by it? What if he could choose to use the Darkness, and balance it with the light of being the Savior? Hadn't he said himself the man and beast could not exist without the other? Hadn't Belle told him Merlin had said perhaps someday someone could balance the Darkness and the Light? It was as if a wall came crashing down in his mind, no longer able to hold him back.

We are bursting through the barricades and reaching for the sun.  
We are warriors! Yes that's what we've become!

He could have it all, but not the way the Darkness said he could. For a few bleak moments, even having made the right choice, he thought he'd failed at saving Gideon. And then somehow, he truly had been given a second chance. Gideon was magically there, a baby again. He and Belle would have the chance to raise him after all. They'd been through everything that could be thrown at them, and come through it as a family.

Later that night, tired as they both were, Rumple and Belle shared a dance as Gideon slept. It was a celebration of finally being together. And for the first time, Rumple believed himself to be someone truly deserving- of his wife, his family, and his happiness.

And I know that I deserve your love.  
There's nothing I'm not worthy of.


End file.
